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So Close to Epic… So Damn Close

Do you ever have that moment when you’re reading a book, or watching a movie, or playing a game, and it’s a REAL good book or movie or game, I mean cool as heck, but there’s this one thing that just leaps out at you, an opportunity lost, and you turn to a buddy and say, “Oh man, if they’d just done X, that would have been frikkin’ AWESOME!!!! Next level and then some!”

You know what I’m saying?

What they did is great, you’re really digging it, but this one thing just leaps out at you as an opportunity to go that step beyond, ludicrous speed, and you think, “oh wow, that would have just taken this shit to the next level, y’mean? Word.”

Okay, I’ll stop that. Sorry.

I had that moment today while chatting with Cassie about, of all things, Holy Paladin nerfs.

World of Warcraft is awesome. It’s amazing. They hit the ball right out of the park.

But can everyone be perfect all of the time, and think of EVERYTHING?

Nah. And we shouldn’t expect it. I know I don’t. I face every new challenge with a renewed appreciation for their excellence and imagination.

It’s a damn shame what they did to Old Blanchy.

Maybe in this case they DID think of it. Maybe they had a developer meeting where they weighed the pros and cons, with super awesome on one side, but some other issue on the other I can’t imagine bringing it down. Like limited long term utility maybe, not enough long term bang for the buck.

Because, you know, walking hand pets from max level Archeaology bring so much to the table. Whoops, a little snark backed up there, excuse me. [urp]

Me, as soon as it occured to me, I know if I’d been in a developer meeting, I would have gone for it. No half measures, no wimping out, this would have been my cause célèbre. I would have taken this to the streets, man.

C’mon, if you love anything about Hunters, just give it a second and think about it!

How totally freaking awesome would it be, as a Hunter falling into the deep water of Vashj’ir, your ship destroyed and you about to drown, to survive just by the skin of your teeth? And then, faced with living in this incredibly hostile underwater environment, to be able to tame an underwater swimming pet supremely adapted to thrive in these conditions and trained kill at your command?

Sure, a pet that you can ONLY summon underwater, but there to journey with you as you explore the underwater realms together?

HOW FREAKING COOL would it be to be a Hunter with a trained attack shark?

Or manta rays, or eels, or, dare I suggest it for the US Navy veterans in the crowd, a trained attack SEAL?

And of course, at level 85, I would make sure there would be the search for the ultimate in rare pets…

Now, oviously this much awesome has to have limitations. I wouldn’t expect you to be able to summon it on land, for example.

But for the duration of your time underwater, you would have the ultimate killing machine on YOUR side for a change!

It’s not like it would be overpowered, I’d just make it be one of those flavor things, where you wouldn’t HAVE to abandon your favorite pet, but if you play a Hunter that you think of as the ultimate master of beasts, the supreme survivor, able to adapt to and overcome any environment, it would be the bestest.

Can you just imagine almost drowning, being saved, having a water breathing spell cast on you, and then having a nearby Hunter NPC named Mania standing nearby in the cavern, maybe over in the corner still half in the water with her shark near her idly swimming in endless circles, who if you approach and talk to her suggests… (suggests, mind you, NOT gives a quest), that “In an environment as hazardous as this, a smart Hunter learns to survive by taking advantage of the strengths of the local animal population. Oh, and have you met Fluffy, here? My, what big fangs you have, Fluffy! Oh yes you do! You’re just my little snookums, now aren’t you! Oh yes you are!”

(My apologies to Mania if this imagined characterization in any way annoys her. I do not know her well enough to know if she would ever have a pet attack shark named ‘Fluffy’ or ‘Snookums’. It’s nice to think so, though.)

Not a quest, of course, because the completionist within us would then make us want to do it, regardless of whether we ever want to tame another pet besides our beloved Snookums or not.

No, just a suggestion, almost like an easter egg, that maybe you might have something new you could try in this all new type of zone, if you really wanted to.

It would be a fun change of pace, it would feel incredibly true to the class and environment, and then once you leave Vashj’ir, you return to using other styles of pet that can, you know, breathe air, since while there ARE land sharks on shore, they generally come with rum drinks and the smell of tanning oil.

But when the time comes to do the Rock Lobster daily cooking quest in Stormwind, well, you’d have got a pet on hand to protect you while you swim around opening lobster traps under the docks. Right?

It would have been so incredibly epic, you know?

Blizzard’s developers can’t possibly think of everything, although they come damn close. This is just one little thing I certainly do wish would have made it.

I would have had a Hammerhead Shark pet named “TheStig”, renowned master of the hammerhead.

Did anyone notice that while Old Blanchy is dead in the new Cataclysm Westfall, Old Blanchy is also still VERY MUCH ALIVE at the Westfall Brigade Encampment in Grizzly Hills in Northrend??

And yes, I agree that developers are only human and can’t catch anything. And Old Blanchy is not exactly an essential NPC, either quest-wise or lore-wise.

Still . . . . it’s kind of odd hearing from a friend who’s questing in Westfall about how sad it is what happened to Old Blanchy when one of my alts still leveling in Northrend is running across Old Blanchy every time I go to the flight point.

Regarding the main topic of the post — yes, underwater-only hunter pets would be *awesome*!!!

First of all, my hunter alt would be SO excited to have a shark pet. Man that would be awesome.

Speaking of “Not a quest, of course, because the completionist within us would then make us want to do it, regardless of whether we ever want to tame another pet besides our beloved Snookums or not.” I’ve noticed a large change, or at least I perceive it as a large change to questing in Cat. You get a bread crumb quest that takes you to a new place (that’s been the norm since BC or even Vanilla) but then it seems you only get two or three quests at a time, turn them in, and repeat. You can’t skip any quests. It makes for great story the first time through, they want us to be live characters involved in the lore that they have written, I get that.

But when my alts are leveling up, I liked it that I could just fly to all three quest hubs in Zangarmarsh or Borean Tundra, pick up 20 some quests, and spend an hour going around doing them all. Then turn in all at once, rinse, repeat. I could also skip quests that were a pain in the butt the first time. It kind of seems like that way of questing is out the window.

Granted, tons of my leveling has been in the “dung finder” in full guild runs, so perhaps I just never made it past the starter bread crumb lines? I did quest all the way to friendly for Therazene rep though, and it seemed consistent to that point. The only advantage I’ve seen is it cut down on ganking because of phasing. Other than that…I don’t know. You think this was one of the “wouldn’t it be epic if” ideas they had?

I once had Segacedi from the Dalaran sewer chase me halfway up to the surface… Underwater pets would be kind of cool, but think of all the floating skeletons the server would have to render because of people trying to tame the whale shark. 😀